Shuttered Minnesota Ethanol Plant to Restart Production

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Last week, privately held Energetics (Morris, Minnesota) closed on the sale of a former Diversified Energy Company (DENCO) (Morris) ethanol plant. The new owners plan to have the facility producing ethanol by October 1, 2010.

Energetics purchased the plant last week. The plant will be known as DENCO II, even though the original DENCO has been dissolved. Energetics is in the process of obtaining operational permits and plans on hiring 30 employees.

The 25 million-gallon facility has an interesting history. The original owner was Morris Ag Energy Incorporated, which moved out of the plant. DENCO LLC was formed in 1998 and took over the plant, hiring ICM (Colwich, Kansas) to retro-fit the plant to update the engineering and increase production to 15 million gallons. The plant re-started operations in late 1998 and underwent subsequent upgrades to increase production. In 2005, Australian Ethanol Limited, through its subsidiary U.S. Biofuels Incorporated, acquired DENCO who then sold the plant to another Australian company. In 2006, DENCO was purchased by Big Island Grain (Morris), but the facility was shuttered in 2009 due to market conditions.

Currently, Minnesota has 20 operational ethanol plants, and two are being planned.

The plant is on County Road 22 in the city of Morris, Minnesota, in Stevens county, approximately 110 miles southeast of Fargo, North Dakota.

Industrial Info's Databases provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging alternative fuels market. Our North American Biodiesel Database covers 160 operational plants and 71 plants under development. Our North American Ethanol Database covers 208 plants currently in operation and 136 plants under various development phases. Our North American Wood Fuel Pellet Database includes 63 operational plants producing more than 25,000 tons annually, and 33 projects under progress.

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